Like the back of my hand.......

Lannion Travel Blog

Seems like I'm leaving the house later and later as the days fly past. I have honestly never walked as much as this since........well, since the trip to Cornwall last month. I told Mark that I thought I'd walked off the last ounce of fat that had been clinging to my thighs since bingeing on scones, clotted cream and jam a couple of weeks back.

Today I waited until after lunch to walk into Lannion city centre because I knew that the shops would be open again beginning about 1330 or so. I filled up my morning updating this blog, reading and answering emails and generally laying about just because I felt like it. I gathered up the laundry to take downstairs as Mme.

Half timbered houses in Lannion.

Stervinou graciously offered to wash it. I hadn't expected her to hang it on the line as well and felt even more of a guilt trip when it was neatly folded and stacked on a chair upon my return to the house in the early evening. I shall miss this pampering when we make our way back home in a few days.

The city centre was a bee hive of activity when I made my way down through the now familiar narrow streets. For some reason I was feeling quite fatigued at the onset. My legs were aching something awful and reminded me of the time I had shin splints after playing too many days of tennis in a row. I decided to walk on the "left bank" of the town, an area across the river from my usual track. I walked past the train station where we had arrived just days before and up the hill into an area that appeared to be the old section of the town.

Doggie toilettage takes its place next to a much smaller hair salon.

There were half-timbered buildings with their leaning walls and crooked windows that had probably been built 400 to 500 years before, next to more contemporary homes that had been built within the last couple hundred years. I laughed when I saw a doggie salon complete with a selection of haut couture for Fido or FiFi, as the case may be, hanging in the window. This was right next door to a "human" salon advertising the latest coiffure for Madame. I suppose you could get your pooch pampered at the same time as your own treatment. The French certainly have it all figured out.

I finally decided to take a break myself and have a bite to eat as well as a delicious cafe au lait at a corner pub called "Le Chope". The meal wasn't all that brilliant but the quiche and salad filled the hole in my stomach.

Quiche with "salad" for my lunch.

I'm never too sure what I'll end up with when I order "salad" in a foreign country. In England, it consists of a lettuce leaf with a transparent slice of tomato draped across it which is then parked next to your ham sandwich, a single, thin slice of meat on buttered bread. This particular salad was a good sized cereal bowl overflowing with chopped, iceberg lettuce......and that's it. There was a horseradish tasting dressing to drizzle over the top as an afterstatement. That didn't matter though as I was hungry and I quickly inhaled the meal to the blare of American hits from the 70's and 80's interspersed with a few more contemporary French tunes. Once I had gathered my strength, I began the walk back up to the B&B as it was threatening rain and I'd left my umbrella in the safety and warmth of our bedroom.

The island and the rose granite rock formations around Perros-Guirec.

Not long after Mark returned from work, M. Stervinou made good on his promise to drive us along the coastline to see some of the red granite formations for which this part of Bretagne is known. The towns adjacent to Lannion are considered resort areas and are jammed with tourists during the weeks of the summer season. Monsieur S. explained that these areas are booked a year in advance and even though the summer of 2007 was cold and rainy, the crowds converged without hesitation as the vacations were already planned and lodging already paid. No self respecting holiday maker would throw money down the drain just because of a little squall.

In the short time before dusk we made our way through Perreos-Guirec, Ploumanac'h, Tregastel and countless other Breton named villages that hugged the sometimes rugged and sometimes sandy beached coastline.

One of the sandy beaches in "off-season" Perros-Guirec.

The sidewalks were rolled up for the winter and the "summer" houses were closed and shuttered with very few locals appearing to keep the villages from looking like ghost towns. Each village name was rich in Breton culture and had its own particular meaning such as "castle" or "strand" or "manor". Looking out at the natural made protected harbors one could see the majority of sail boats competing for space with the handfull of motorboats. As Monsieur said, it is very expensive to run a motorboat here because of fuel costs and afterall, the wind is free! We'll see how long it takes for the government to come up with a tax for that.

The rain which had threatened our pleasure earlier was now splattering the windshield as we arrived home. As this was not condusive to a walk back into town, we gratefully accepted the offer of a ride from Natasha, the daughter of our hosts. Natasha, who is also in the airline business, was down visiting from Paris and very kindly accepted the task of dropping us off in the town centre. She speaks excellent English as well as fluent Italian and no doubt some Spanish as we ran across her former Spanish teacher as we were driving up to our restaurant. Another tasty meal of galettes, mine with assorted seafood in a rich cream sauce along with the "salad" (this one had a wedge of tomato on top) and Mark's, which contained ham, cheese and a fried egg on top. With his orange crepe for dessert and my apple sorbet swimming in Calvados (an apple liqueur), we finished off our meal as our ride magically reappeared at the exact moment we stepped out of the restaurant. A perfect ending to another perfect day in the land of the Gaulois.